Social Ecology Theory (Week 5).docx

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School

Queen's University

Department

Sociology

Course

SOCY 275

Professor

Stacey Alerie

Semester

Fall

Description

Social Ecology Theory
 What happened before Chicago school was developed
o Demonic perspective, classical theory
o Protosociology,
 Low life reporting of sociology
 Descriptions of crime and deviance, discuss social
communities that existed, techniques they used,
all descriptions and no explanations
o Philosophical roots
 Knowledge as a cultural process, sociological
positivism
 No institutionalized sociology before Chicago school
 Chicago school was a process
o Resolved thoughts and action, philosophical,
o How best to go about research, belief that social facts
are not self evident,
o Social facts are interpreted by the minds of people in
the social world,
o Those who observe and analyze are responsible for
their interpretations.
o Everyone has different interpretations (philosophical
thought)
 We acquire knowledge through the social world in which we
live
o Knowledge as a cultural process
 Sociological positivism
o Natural sciences,
o Empirical evidence to support claims
o Research
 Sociological positivism is more developed and
focused
 Focusing on the social world,
 Looking for regularities in social life,
 How people interact and how it affects
behaviour, norms of society, history of
society
 Society is constantly changing, and produced by the people
within in, and interpreted by the people within it
The Chicago school
 Department of sociology in Chicago
 Research model and theory 1890-1930
 Innovative o Different from everything before, they set the ground,
first department of its kind
o Institutionalized and formalized the sociology of crime
and deviance, focused, professional scholars, research
was specific
 Emphasized the study of ecological distribution of deviance
and social disorganization and the use of ethnography
 Explanations for crime and deviance
Research Agenda
 Anthropological and ecological study
 First hand knowledge
o Focused on primitive cultures, customs, beliefs,
interactions.
 People were easily accessible
Ethnographies
 Micro Level case studies
o Individual deviance
 Ethnographic approach
o Interview, gain life history
 Macro level Ecological studies
o Larger scale,
o Mapping, plot hot spots for crime
o Where crime would occur again
o Characteristics of neighborhood
 Ethnographic and Anthropological Approach
o First hand knowledge
Why Chicago?
 Chicago sociology became detailed study of Chicago
 Period of transition
o Population increase,
o More immigrants,
o New industries,
o People were mobile,
o Technological advancements
 Wealth of opportunities and research avenues
 Chicago school studied social world and analysis
Ecology
 Branch of biology
 Not explanation for social behaviour
 Framework to help research,
o Informed how to analyze and observe o Terminology to understand human interactions
 Refers to the study plants and animals
o Their relationships to each other and within their
natural habitat
o Everything is interconnected
 Focus of study would be on
o Relationships and interdependencies within the web of
life
o Different species create a whole
 Each part depends on another part, species
struggle to survive
o Relationships between organisms
 Translated this into the social world
o Human communities resembled interdependence and
interaction
 (Robert park)
o People are dependant on each other, and other groups
Human ecology – Robert Park
 Symbiosis
o Different species living together for mut